Fashion Mode

Promotional lanyards are one of the cheapest and simplest products to increase your brand exposure. Their value as a marketing tool is unparalleled, as they offer a straightforward method of putting your brand out on the streets, at arenas, events and anywhere you decide to target. Designing and producing a lanyard with effective campaign marketing ensures that you can operate within specific demographics and timeframes.

Students are a very attractive group for those in the marketing and advertising industry. During the start of term in the later months of the year (September onwards) students began to rapidly flock to their new Universities. Cities can see a drastic increase in population with many large universities boasting towards the healthy end of 5,000 new students per year. In somewhere like London which has well over 50 centres for higher education, this influx represents both a market to be tapped and tools to be used.

Students themselves will be targeted by marketing companies undoubtedly, but they can in themselves become a marketing tool to be exploited. Fresher's Fairs are popular conventions that operate in the starting weeks of the University term, for which the societies and organisations hope to recruit new members but local businesses also maintain a presence here. There is a big "freebie" culture at these Fairs, in which the students try to collect as many free gifts from local businesses as possible. From vouchers and coupons to clothing and technology, businesses hope to snare their future business.

Lanyards are very popular gifts to give away as students are likely to continue using them in the early weeks of term. Added keys, cards and flash drives that need to be carried away make lanyards an attractive solution to this problem. Branding your lanyard and giving it away at these Fairs opens up a whole city of brand exposure, as the students explore their new homes wearing your company colours, slogan and logo around their necks.

The introduction of a new brand to students can also be the pendulum which swings their decision. If you are one of two bars on the high street, one of which the students have never heard of and one of which was giving them free lanyards at their Fresher's Fair; they're going to, consciously or not, choose the brand that they know. Unless there is a significant difference in price, quality or service then the same psychological rules will apply when it comes to retail, catering or any other monetised business.

Tapping into a fashionable design or appearance at the time can lead to students choosing to wear their lanyards beyond the time limit of the gimmick sensitivity at the start of term. Established brands with a good presence will enjoy more success here, but with the right design any brand can achieve this end. Lanyards represent a unique opportunity to establish this exposure within the price bracket. Giving away more functional accessories and clothing like t-shirts and bags might be more impacting, but the costs will be significantly higher and along with it, the risk.